Thursday, May 23, 2013

Jim and I are in Santa Clara at BayCon. They started giving the different iterations of the convention subtitles a while back, and this one is "Triskaidecaphobicon," which made me snicker.

Despite living almost a thousand miles away now, I consider BayCon my home convention in fandom. I was a gofer at the first one (in 1982), and was on staff until a few years after I got married in '96, when I finally admitted that it's tough to work ConOps, even as a grunt, when you can't attend meetings during the year. I gofered again a couple of times, but have settled into being an attendee. Hey, I get to see panels now! Whenever I want! :D

The best part is seeing people I've known for a long time, many of whom I never or hardly ever see anywhere else. That's really what it's all about -- keeping up with the people. Sometimes a person from Back When will vanish for years or decades, then pop up again, and that's always pretty awesome.

Lois McMaster Bujold is the writer GOH, which is pretty exciting. I've seen her at other conventions; she's a nice person, and gives great reading.

If anyone I know online is going to be here this weekend, drop a comment or an e-mail and we can get together. I love meeting internet people in realspace. :)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Kaitlyn Hunt is an 18-year-old high school girl who's in love with another girl, a 15-year-old who goes to her school. They met when Kate was 17, and the younger girl's parents disapproved of the relationship, but rather than, say, talking to Kate's parents about it, or trying to resolve their concerns in a civilized manner, they waited for Kate to turn 18 and then called the police.

Kate was expelled from school, and arrested in February for "lewd and lascivious battery."

Under Florida law, engaging in sexual activity with a minor between the ages of 12 and 16 is a felony. Because the law does not make an exception for consenting minors, Hunt could potentially face up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted, and up to $10,000 in fines.

Florida does have a Romeo-and-Juliet law. These are generally intended to provide some rational exceptions for two young people who are close in age. Unfortunately, the Florida law would only let Kate petition to have her name taken off the sex offender registry after she's convicted; it would do nothing to save her from the rest of the legal meatgrinder, and she could still spend those 10 years in prison for the heinous crime of having a girlfriend who goes to her school.

Oh, and if one might be thinking of giving the younger girl's parents the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that it's the relationship with an "adult" that they're objecting to, they've also accused Kate of turning their daughter gay. So... yeah. This is pure, hateful homophobia at work here.

Please sign the petition on Change.org asking to have Kate freed. This is a ridiculous abuse of the laws intended to protect children from actual predators, and of the sex offender registry -- unfortunately one of many. We need to make it clear to parents who disapprove of their kid's boyfriend or girlfriend that criminalizing teenagers who fall in love with other teenagers won't be allowed to stand.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Wow, two anthology posts in a row! I've never done that before. I've been kind of busy, doing some cool things.

Early in May I attended a workshop on how to do POD books -- covers, interiors, marketing and selling, with a lot of really shocking info on how the business has changed very recently. I spent the time between my April anthology post and the workshop itself fiddling with Photoshop Elements (which it turned out I didn't need for the class :P ) and InDesign, which is an awesome tool -- once you've learned even the basics of ID, it becomes clear why it's the industry standard. Once you have your art (for about fifteen dollars off a stock art site -- and yes, they have art art as well as photos) you can do the whole cover, beautifully, in InDesign.

Flowing the text in is easy. Front matter goes in first, then your story or novel text; ID will create as many pages as you need, and you use master pages to set the layout. The fiddly part here is making sure the formatting works at the line- and paragraph-level. Hunting for widows (the first line of a paragraph alone at the bottom of a page), orphans (the last line of a paragraph alone at the top of a page, and widowed orphans (the last line of a paragraph, totally alone at the top of a page, with no other text on the page) can make your interior look much better. Most of these can be fixed easily by using the tracking tool on a whole paragraph at once, tightening or loosening it enough to pull a lone word or two up onto the previous line (re-flowing everything up to close the space) or to push a word or two onto the next line (pushing everything down a line) while not changing the spacing so much that someone casually reading will even notice.

InDesign is an incredibly powerful tool, and there are usually multiple ways of doing just about anything, which means it can be overwhelming at first. Having personal classroom instruction, one-to-three instruction with Allyson in small groups, and people coming around to give us one-to-one help during lab periods, was worth the cost of the workshop, and then some. The workshop was taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Allyson Longueira (Allyson is the publisher at WMG), with help during labs by a couple of local writers who are old hands at this and came to help out. Lee Allred was particularly awesome in giving assistance to all of us newbie book designers.

And really, that's what it comes down to: the design. You can achieve the same results with other tools, but what's important is the design. Look at other books in your genre -- professionally published books, not just indie books -- and see what they look like. What elements are on the cover? How are they laid out? What's large or small? What elements are associated together, and placed near one another? Notice those little tags -- "Bestselling author of Popular Book," or "Book 3 of Author's Cool Series" -- that are too small to read in thumbnail? You still need them on your e-books. Even if they're unreadable in an online bookseller's catalog, they're design elements and readers are used to seeing them, even as a little line of unreadable text, on professionally designed covers. The cover will look naked and unfinished without them.

What's included in the front matter, and how is it laid out? What do new chapter pages look like in a novel, or new story pages in a collection or anthology? What does the spacing look like, between the headers and the text, the footers and the text, the text and the margins? If your presentation is amateurish, potential readers (buyers) will notice, even if they can't articulate what bugs them about a particular cover or interior. New York has conditioned us to expect certain things about a professional book, and if an indie book doesn't have all those things, or they're not laid out the way we're used to seeing, that'll ping our "amateur" alarm, even if we can't put our finger on why. Learning how to design the book, and the cover, is more important than learning to use kerning tools or feathered gradients in a particular software package. (Although you really should learn those things in whatever software you're using.)

So before the workshop, I was playing with the software and watching instructional videos online. Then I was in Oregon for a week and a half, and a lot busier than I thought I'd be. The day I flew to Portland, I met a writer friend [waves to PD Singer] at the airport, along with a friend of hers who lives in Portland, and we went and had lunch with a few other writers in our genre who are local to Portland. I love meeting internet people in realspace, so that was very cool. After lunch, Pam and I drove out to the coast, and we roomed together for the workshop itself. We sat next to each other in class, swapping help and opinions and angst. :)

After the workshop, we drove back to Portland and Pam dropped me off at my hotel. When I'm at these workshops, I like staying an extra night in Portland; not having to scramble to catch a plane that day means that I can flex my schedule to match that of whoever's driving me. One of the writers we had lunch with on the way out came to my hotel that evening. [waves to Amelia Gormley.] We chatted, had dinner together, and chatted some more.

The biggest bomb dropped on the workshop, though, was during the evening sessions, which were all business discussions. Remember Ella Distribution? I mentioned them a couple of months ago -- they were set up to distribute indie books by small publishers to bookstores. Well, Ella is gone. It was well organized, with an awesome web site, and had great people working on it, but within less than half a year, the industry changed. Now, not only is Ella no longer necessary, but it can't compete with the big kids on the playground.

Dean and Sheldon McArthur (Shelly's one of the best known booksellers in the country) talked to us about what'd changed recently with the distributors. Basically, 1) Baker and Taylor no longer marks books as POD published, and Ingram and the others followed suit; 2) B&T (and the others) now offer POD books at a good discount to booksellers, about 45%, and more if they keep on top of their bills; and 3) B&T (and the others) now allow returns on POD books.

There are indie-pubbed books in bookstores right now. If you go through Createspace, and pay the extra $25 for extended distribution, your books are available to bookstores through their standard distributors, on terms that make stocking them attractive. The only barrier right now is your book's presentation -- mainly cover and summary blurb. (Again, does your cover look professional, or does it look amateur?)

The playing field between an indie-pubbed book and a midlist New York published book is now level when it comes to getting into bookstores.

Shelly talked about how he finds books to buy for his store, through the distributor, through publisher catalogs and promotional material, and through sites like Goodreads, where he'll go to see what books people might be talking about that he hadn't heard of. He's been buying indie books ever since the distributors changed their policies. He doesn't care where a book comes from so long as it's a good book, professionally presented, and neither do the readers.

Dean and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are talking about this all month on their blogs, in much more detail. As always, there's good stuff in the comments, too. I highly recommend you read their posts on the subject. (Actually, if you're a writer I highly recommend you read their blogs all the time. Lots of great stuff there.)

During all this, I had a deadline on the 15th to get a story turned in for an event running in June on Goodreads, and the story I was writing was getting longer and longer and longer.... [headdesk] When I wasn't futzing with InDesign during the workshop, I was writing, and after I came home I was still writing. I got it done, a 60K word novel that'll be available on Goodreads some time in June, and as an e-book on Goodreads and ARe some time after that, depending on where it is in the very long list of books the group's volunteers have to work on. I'll be doing a paperback version some time after that. (I did a cover for it at the workshop.)

And now I'm back to writing other things.

The business is changing while we sit here. If we stay on top of the changes, and take advantage of them, they'll work for us. This is a great time to be a writer, and a wonderful time to be indie publishing, or getting into it if you're not yet.

Friday, May 17, 2013

If you've just wandered in off the internet, hi and welcome. :) I do these posts every month, so if this post isn't dated in the same month you're in, click here to make sure you're seeing the most recent one.

Markets with specific deadlines are listed first, "Until Filled" markets are at the bottom. There are usually more details on the original site; always click through and read the full guidelines before submitting. Note that some publishers list multiple antho guidelines on one page, so after you click through you might have to scroll a bit.

Glam rock was arguably the most visually outrageous and flamboyant embodiment of rock and pop fusion in history. From the latter half of the sixties to the early seventies, individuals were unafraid to paint bright designs on their faces, strive for sexual androgyny, and enhance their performances with unapologetic theatrics.

In our Glam Rock anthology, we’re looking for short stories that depict at least one character who is a glam rock star, be it the lead singer or part of the band. They can be male or female, but we’re looking for the gender ambiguity, androgyny, and bisexuality aspects that were so indicative of this period in rock and pop. Bring on the costumes, the bright colors, and the droves of glitter-bedecked fans! We want to see your main characters lighting up the stage and weaving a tangled web in their personal lives.

If set in the historical period, we won’t dissuade writers from capitalizing on the unprotected sex, drugs, and glamor that defined the times. We are not looking for RPF (real person fiction), so no pulling real rock stars from history. Feel free to take inspiration from the real thing, but this is your chance to get original and knock our platforms off! Make your rock stars the epitome of the glam rock era: Beautiful, tragic, and all things in excess.

Authors will receive royalties as well as an initial payment of $50 for their story. This payment is not an advance and does not have to be earned out before royalties are paid. Royalties on individual e-book releases will be 50% of cover price on direct sales through Storm Moon Press' e-store, and 40% of cover price minus distribution costs for sales through third party vendors. In addition, authors will receive the same percentage royalty on sales of the anthology e-book divided equally among the authors, as well as 25% of cover price on direct sales of the print anthology through Storm Moon Press' e-store, and 20% of cover price minus distribution costs for sales through third party vendors, also divided equally among all authors. All royalties will be paid quarterly.

==Horror Stories, Weird Literature, Ghost Stories, Literary Fiction.
==Each story must either subtly or directly reflect the title of the anthology.
==Stories between 2000 and 10,000 words.
==One-off payment upon publication: 1p (£0.01) per word
==Start Date for Submissions: 1 November 2012
==End Date for Submissions: 30 May 2013

Submissions (not simultaneous or multiple) as a Word attachment to dflewis48@hotmail.com. As with some earlier Megazanthus Press publications, you may submit by anonymous email and your story will be rejected or accepted before knowing who you are. Also, you may submit non-anonymously. The accepted stories will all be published with their correct by-line. [Please expect a simple acknowledgement within a few days of your submission. Otherwise please send it again.]

Stories must be previously unpublished in any form.

As with the ‘The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies’ and ‘The First Book of Classical Horror Stories’, DF Lewis will edit, publish, design, typeset and print (via Lulu) this book. It will be distributed under an ISBN system. Please at least read the reviews of previous Megazanthus Press publications to gauge the type of fiction favoured by the editor.

I may need to keep your story for the whole reading-period but may not be able eventually to accept it depending on the timing of other acceptable stories being submitted to me over the period.

Renowned editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow will be editing an unthemed, all original anthology of terror and supernatural fiction for CZP, Fearful Symmetries, scheduled to be published in Spring 2014. (The project was funded through Kickstarter by your generous donations!)

Ellen says: "This is a non-theme, all original anthology of about 125,000 words of terror and supernatural horror. I’m looking for all kinds of horror, but if you’re going to use a well-worn trope, try to do something fresh with it. If you’ve read any volumes of The Best Horror of the Year, you’ll know that my taste is pretty eclectic, that I like variety, and that while I don’t mind violence, I don’t think it should be the point of a story. I don’t want vignettes but fully formed stories that are about something. I want to be creeped out."

Payment is 7 cents/word. Up to 10,000 words, BUT Ellen would prefer stories up to 7500 words. No reprints.

A large percentage of the stories have already been solicited, but we have a small window for open submissions, from May 1 - May 31, 2013. Please send your best work.

PAYMENT: $0.05 per word + contributor copy. Payment will be made upon acceptance. Our preferred method of payment is via PayPal, but you may request a check.

FORMAT: RTF or DOC. Standard Manuscript Format or something close to it (We won’t take points off if you prefer Courier to Times New Roman or some such). Please remove your name from the manuscript as all submissions are read “blind”. Submit to: ufoeditors @ gmail dot com

WHAT WE WANT:

We’re looking for speculative stories with a strong humor element. Think Resnick and Sheckley, Fredric Brown and Douglas Adams. We welcome quality flash fiction and non-traditional narratives. Take chances, try something new, just make sure that your story is funny.

Puns and stories that are little more than vehicles for delivering a punch line at the end aren’t likely to win us over.

Most submissions we’ve received in the past are rejected because they aren’t particularly funny. For this anthology we’re looking for humor, not just lighthearted, optimistic stories. Ask yourself if your story might make the reader laugh out loud, and submit if the answer is yes.

The best way to learn what we like is to read the first volume. You can buy it here and also read the online stories for free.

LENGTH: 500-6000 words.

PAYMENT: $0.05 per word + contributor copy. Payment will be made upon acceptance. Our preferred method of payment is via PayPal, but you may request a check.

FORMAT: RTF or DOC. Standard Manuscript Format or something close to it (We won’t take points off if you prefer Courier to Times New Roman or some such). Please remove your name from the manuscript as all submissions are read “blind”.

POLICIES & RESPONSE TIME: No reprints, multiple or simultaneous submissions please. Do not send us any story we already considered for UFO1. We will respond to all subs within 30 days. If you don’t hear by then please check your spam folder, then query at the same e-mail address with the word QUERY in the title of the e-mail.

If your story is rejected before May 31 you may send another, but we will only consider up to two submissions per author. (To clarify, send the second ONLY after the first one is rejected). If your second submission is rejected, we will ask you to wait until next year, when we’re reading for UFO3.

SUBMISSION WINDOW: May 1, 2013 through May 31, 2013.

RIGHTS SOUGHT: First Worldwide print and electronic English Language rights. Exclusivity for 3 months from date of release. Non-exclusive rights to keep the anthology in print across different publishing platforms afterward.

We will be publishing an anthology of vampire fiction Dying to Live in October 2013. Submissions are being accepted until June 1, 2013, which is a change from our original date of August. We are looking for dark vampire stories; please do not send any stories about vampires that sparkle!

== All stories must be in doc. or docx, .rtf format.
== All stories must be anywhere from 2000 to 8000 words long.
== Please use 12 point font and double space your text.
== We are looking for dark Vampires, of the old fashioned kind! Erotica is acceptable as long as the vampires drink human blood, bite, kill and so forth. We are not looking for love story type vampires. Stories that will not be accepted are stories with child rape, molestation, or pedophilia.
== Allow at least 6 weeks before inquiring if your story will be included if you have not heard from us. You will receive an email if your story has been accepted.
== NO SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS, NO MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS, NO REPRINTS!

Submissions should be sent electronically as an attachment to: submissions@diabolicpublications.com

On the subject line of the email, include your name, the title of the work you are submitting, and the anthology you are submitting for "Dying to Live".

In the body of the email, include your contact information (Real Name or official pen name, not your online name), the word count of the work you are submitting, and a brief biography. Make certain to use an email address that you have access to all the time as correspondences from us come through email only!

We only accept electronic submissions at this time.

PAY: Made by Paypal only, if you don't have a paypal account please get one.

Fiction: US$.03/word, payable upon publication. Plus, one copy of the edition in which the work appears when edition is published as a paper copy.

Reprints: US$.01/word, payable upon publication. Plus, one copy of the edition in which the work appears when edition is published as a paper copy.

RIGHTS: Exclusive First World English Rights for print and First Electronic Rights for two years from date of print publication. Rights are then no longer exclusive and revert back to the author after the two year period.

The book is being produced in collaboration with the Institution of Agricultural Engineers, which celebrates its 75th Anniversary this year. To commemorate this event, we are looking for original science fiction stories that speculate on what the future might hold for agricultural engineering, farming and food production over the next century.

Ideally stories should be of 4,500 words or less, though this limit is flexible. Payment of 1p a word (or equivalent) up to a limit of £45.00 will be made for successful submissions.

The book will be published towards the end of 2013.

Stories should be presented in standard manuscript format, with italics used for italicised words (not underlining), and double inverted commas for speech. Please submit your story as an attachment (either doc or rtf) to the following email address: flashfic@newconpress.co.uk

Neverland’s Library will be an anthology focusing on the rediscovery of the fantastic; magic, dragons, the supernatural, etc. We are looking for stories which highlight finding that which was once thought lost, incorporating fantastical and/or fictitious elements. We will not restrict how the story is told. All styles, settings, and tones are welcome.

We are looking for only unpublished stories. If the story has been made available for free or payment online then please do not submit it for consideration as it will be considered ineligible under our criteria. We ask that authors limit themselves to no more than 2 submissions, with no simultaneous submissions. That means when a story is submitted to us, it should not be submitted for publication consideration anywhere else.

If you have questions regarding the eligibility of your story, please send a query email before submitting the story in question and we will get back to you promptly in response to your concern.

Submission Period

(Subject to change) Submissions will be open from March 5th 2013, until June 20th, 2013. Exact dates may vary depending on volume of entries.

Payments and Rights

Upon successful completion of the Kickstarter funding campaign, authors will receive 3c/per word. If we fail to reach our goal, all submissions will remain the property of the author and Neverland’s Library will not own any rights to the stories submitted.

If the Kickstarter funding is a success and your story is selected for inclusion in the Neverland’s Library Anthology, we will email a digital copy of the contract for the authors examination. Upon agreement of terms the editor signed contract will be mailed to the story author to be signed. After the contract is returned to us and signed by all involved parties, payment will be promptly delivered via check or PayPal, at the submitters preference.

If your submission is accepted, we will be buying First Anthology Print and First Anthology eBook Rights. These are non-exclusive licenses allowing us to use your story in this anthology only. The author will retain all other print rights, allowing them to sell their story to magazines, websites, podcasts or as individual short stories, or in a collection of their own work, or even sell to another anthology, after six months have passed since the publication of Neverland’s Library.

By submitting a story, you acknowledge that you are in fact the writer and sole owner of the work in question.

DO NOT SUBMIT WORKS IF YOU DON’T OWN THEM.

Length

We are looking for stories within 2,000 – 8,000 words. We may choose to print some shorter or longer pieces, however please try to keep within this targeted range.

Formatting

Only email submissions will be accepted. Please attach all submissions using Microsoft Word (DOC), Rich Text Format (RTF), Plain Text (TXT) or Open Office (ODT) formats only. Any word processor should be able to save a file as at least one of these formats.

Please have all submissions in size 12 Times New Roman font.

How to Submit (What to include)

Please send your story to neverlandslibrary@gmail.com, using the following subject line when submitting:

[NL] STORY TITLE – Your Name

In the body of your email, please include the following:

== Title
== Real name — This is the name that will go on the contract. No pseudonyms or nicknames.
== Pen name — How you want your name to appear in print. Don’t include if you would like to use your real name.
== Word count
== Email address
== Phone number
== Short Bio — This is your chance to tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing experience.

All aforementioned items are required, please do not omit any information. Biography lengths may vary, just let us know what you think we need to know.

We will not share any of your personal information with ANYONE. Contact information will only be used to tell you whether your story was accepted, and update with progress on the Kickstarter, and when (if) the book is finished. We will always attempt to contact you via email first. Phone number will only be used if we need to get in touch with you, and email doesn’t work.

If your story is accepted we will ask you to confirm all information, and you will be given the chance to write a new short biography for publication in the book.

Please send all submissions and questions to Roger and Rebecca at NeverlandsLibrary@gmail.com. We will be happy to answer all questions.

I am looking for horror stories featuring legendary, mythical, or imaginary creatures of Appalachia. Stories based on established local lore are preferred, but exceptions may be made for exceptionally crafted creatures. I am NOT looking for stories with zombies, vampires or other popular monsters. Submitted stories can be set in any time period, but must take place in the Appalachian region.

Although the anthology is mainly targeted for adults, we DO NOT want stories containing language or content unsuitable for children. Submissions should also avoid unflattering Appalachian stereotypes.

Accepted Manuscript Formatting:
Double-spaced.
Use Times New Roman (12).
Italicize what you want italicized.
Single space after sentence-ending punctuation.
Be sure to include your name, address, and email on your manuscript.

[Click through and check the comments for some discussion of what the editor means by "Appalachia," geographically.]

Third Flatiron Publishing is an e-publishing venture based in Boulder, Colorado. We are looking for submissions to our quarterly themed online anthologies. Our focus is on science fiction and fantasy and anthropological fiction. We’re looking for tightly plotted tales in out-of-the-ordinary scenarios.

Please send us short stories that revolve around age-old questions and have something illuminating to tell us as human beings. Fantastical situations and creatures, exciting dialog, irony, mild horror, and wry humor are all welcome. Stories should be between 1,500 and 3,000 words.

Role models for the type of fiction we want include Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Simmons, Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, and Ken Kesey. We want to showcase some of the best new shorts available today.

Click through to the "Submissions" tab for preferred formats, etc.

For each issue, we will also accept a few very short humor pieces on the order of the "Shouts and Murmurs" feature in The New Yorker Magazine (600 words or so). These can be written from a first-person perspective or can be mini-essays that tell people what they ought to do, how to do something better, or explain why something is like it is, humorously. An SF/Fantasy bent is preferred.

Your story must be original work, with the digital rights unencumbered. Beginning with the Summer 2013 issue, accepted stories will be paid at the flat rate of 3 cents per word (U.S.), in return for the digital rights to the story. All other rights will remain with the author. We no longer offer royalties, as we're now into our second year.

Below are guidelines for submitting stories to Long Hidden, and the submission form. Please read the guidelines carefully before submitting.

Direct all queries to questions@longhidden.com.

Do not send story submissions via email, and do not send queries through the submission form.

Who can submit
We welcome stories by authors from all walks of life. We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community, including (but not limited to) people of color; people who are not from or living in the U.S.A.; QUILTBAG and GSM people; people with disabilities, chronic illness, or mental illness; and atheists, agnostics, and members of religious minorities. The protagonists of your story do not have to mirror your own heritage, identities, beliefs, or experiences.

We also especially encourage short story submissions from people who don’t usually write in this format, including poets, playwrights, essayists and authors of historical fiction and historical romance.

Submission deadline and publication schedule

All submissions are due July 31, 2013. If it’s still July 31 in your time zone, you’re good. Acceptance notices will be sent by October 1. The anthology is tentatively slated for a February 2014 release.

Pay and rights

We pay USD 5¢/word for global English first publication rights in print and digital format. The author retains copyright. Payment is upon publication.

Story criteria

== Length: 3000-7000 words (FIRM)
== Your story must be set between the years 1400 and 1920 C.E., and take place primarily in our world or an alternate historical version of our world. (Travel to other worlds, other dimensions, Fairyland, the afterlife, etc. is fine but should not be the focus.)
== Your protagonists must be people who were marginalized in their time and place. By “marginalized” we mean that they belong to one or more groups of people that were categorically, systematically deprived of rights and/or economic power. Examples in most times and places include enslaved people, indigenous people, queer people, laborers, women, people with disabilities, the very young and very old, and people who do not share the local dominant religion, language, or ethnicity. Many people belong to multiple marginalized groups, and many are marginalized in some ways and privileged in others. Your story should acknowledge the complexity and intersectionality of marginalization.
== Your story must contain a significant element of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the weird, without which the story would not work or would be a substantially different story.
== All submissions must be in English.
== No reprints. No Simultaneous submissions.

We will not accept any story containing the following:

== Gratuitous or titillating depictions of violence.
== Gratuitous descriptions of bodies or body parts, or people described only in objectifying ways.
== Horror that relies on shocking or grossing out the reader.
Stories that are all about how someone non-marginalized became an enlightened champion of marginalized people.
== A protagonist from a societally or technologically powerful group who happens to be temporarily or situationally powerless (e.g. a peasant who’s really a prince, a representative of the British East India Company shipwrecked on Ceylon).
== Depictions of marginalized people as being doomed to hopeless misery.
== Depiction of any group, no matter how powerful, as universally, inherently, or irredeemably evil.

Handle with care

If you decide to incorporate one or more of the following elements, please do so with caution and awareness of the ways that they can be problematic or difficult to write about.

== Violence, particularly sexual violence. We recognize that sexual violence is frequently used as a weapon against marginalized people, so we are not issuing a blanket prohibition against it, but please consider very carefully whether you need to include it in your story; and if you decide that you do, please consider very very carefully whether your story needs to show the violent act itself.
== Consensual sexual encounters. We’re not averse to sexual or erotic content, but it needs to further the story and incorporate awareness of the ways real-world power relationships affect sexual behavior and decision-making.
== Stereotypes and clichés.
== Alternate history that drops magic powers or anachronistic technology into a historical setting.
== A protagonist who is the only marginalized person in the story.
== Revenge fantasies.
== A setting that’s already very commonly used in speculative fiction, especially one that’s often associated with stories featuring members of privileged/dominant/colonizing groups, e.g. Victorian England, the American “Wild West”.

What we do want

Your story doesn’t need to have all these elements, but we’re especially interested in stories that have at least some of them.

== Intersectionality.
== Accurate depictions of life on the margins.
== Thoughtful, sensitive incorporation of religion, superstition, and folklore.
== Depictions of historically accurate societal attitudes in the context of an authorial voice that does not condone or espouse bigotry. (For example, your female characters will probably have to deal with societal sexism, but your descriptions of them should not rely on sexist stereotypes.)
== An understanding of how economic, technological, political, and religious influences shape a time and place, especially in alternate historical settings.
== Research bibliographies and suggestions for further reading.
== Integration of friendships, family relationships, and community into the story.
== Protagonists who make conscious choices and take conscious action.
== Side characters who are real people.
== Personal triumphs and successes.
== Making us laugh, think, cheer, and weep.

How to submit

To submit a story to Long Hidden, please fill out the form below. Be sure to:

== Address your email “Dear Long Hidden editors” or “Dear Mr. Older and Ms. Fox” or “Dear Rose and Daniel”. All submissions should be addressed to both editors. See this post for why we feel the need to emphasize this.
== Include your story’s year and location at the beginning of your submission.
== Attach your story as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file, with your name, the story title, and the wordcount on the first page.

[Click through for submission form.]
[Also, see here for a more detailed discussion of what they're doing with the book, what they want, and what writers they've invited already.]

== All stories must be in doc. or docx, .rtf format.
== All stories must be anywhere from 2000 to 8000 words long.
== Please use 12 point font and double space your text.
== We are looking for dark Vampires, of the old fashioned kind! Erotica is acceptable as long as the vampires drink human blood, bite, kill and so forth. We are not looking for love story type vampires. Stories that will not be accepted are stories with child rape, molestation, or pedophilia.
== Allow at least 6 weeks before inquiring if your story will be included if you have not heard from us. You will receive an email if your story has been accepted.
== NO SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS and NO MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS

Submissions should be sent electronically as an attachment to: submissions@diabolicpublications.com

In the subject line of the email, include your name, the title of the work you are submitting, and the edition you are submitting for "Dying to Live".

In the body of the email, include your contact information (Real Name or official pen name, not your online name), the word count of the work you are submitting, and a brief biography. Make certain to use an email address that you have access to all the time as correspondences from us come through email only!

We only accept electronic submissions at this time.

PAY: Made by Paypal only, if you don't have a paypal account please get one.

Fiction: US$.03/word, payable upon publication. Plus, one copy of the edition in which the work appears when edition is published as a paper copy.

Reprints: US$.01/word, payable upon publication. Plus, one copy of the edition in which the work appears when edition is published as a paper copy.

RIGHTS: Exclusive First World English Rights for print and First Electronic Rights for two years from date of print publication. Rights are then no longer exclusive and revert back to the author after the two year period.

The title refers to a line from th acclaimed Arab poet Diwan Abu Nawas and, it is our hope, to inspire both prose poems and short fiction that is both positive in its treatment of Muslim men and expands upon the rich mythology of the Arab world: jinn, the garin, rocs, and ghuls among others. Whether these gay men seek adventure, treasure, or love, the stories should be rich in their surroundings and culture (whether ancient, medieval, or contemporary). Stories should deal with gay or bisexual men and between 2,500 and 10,000 words. Pament for original fiction is 5 cents a word; reprints receive 1 cent a word. All authors receive a free copy of the book. Consider some of the stories by Alex Jeffers when looking at what I want. Submissions should be sent to sberman8@yahoo.com no later than August 1st.

These stories will propel the reader—by wormhole or peephole—through the fantastic, the criminal, and the insane.

Sometimes strange, always original, the stories we publish are of the highest production standards, from thrilling premise all the way to professional editing.

We are now soliciting query letters for Membrane, our first anthology. All genres are eligible, but preference is given to stories that cross more than one and which reflect the flavor and theme described above.

Manuscripts must be between 2,000 and 30,000 words and not previously published by anyone but the author. Self-published works are accepted and encouraged!

We are simply paying for the rights to publish, market, and sell your completed manuscript as part of this or any other Dreadful Cafe anthology. You are encouraged to continue marketing on your own.

However, you will be unable to enter into any exclusive arrangement with other parties once you have sold rights to us. Also, note that we may give your story away for free as part of our marketing efforts, and that we may use edited excerpts from your story for the same.

This applies to both electronic and print versions, both in the US and abroad.

We may, at our discretion, hire an editor (at our expense) to work with you on your manuscript. Payment follows final completion and acceptance of the edited manuscript.

Dreadful Cafe reserves the right to reject your manuscript at any time and for any reason, including elimination from future editions of the published anthology.

No royalties or warranties are given or implied.

Estimated Publication: Pre-holiday 2013

Query Submissions Open: April 1, 2013

Query Submissions Closed: TBD

The Dreadful Cafe is committed to socially responsible publishing. All after-cost proceeds from this anthology will go to support St. Jude's Children's Hospital, because life is too short not to have fun and too precious not to do good.

We encourage you to support the many local charities in your community.

About Me

My name is Angie and I'm a writer living in Seattle, WA with my husband. I publish science fiction, fantasy and crime stories under Angela Penrose, and romance and erotica under Angela Benedetti. I pretty much live at the computer, either writing or online or both. My schedule is chaotically variable, so I might be awake or asleep at any given moment. It's not all bad; writing at 2am when it's quiet is actually pretty cool.